Distributive Epistemic Injustice in AI Ethics: A Co-productionist Account of Global North-South Politics in Knowledge Production
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: In this study, we analyse a comprehensive database (from 1960 to June 2024) of scientific publications in AI Ethics (n= 5755) using Web of Science (WoS) as a data source, to generate quantitative insights around the research trends within the field. We systematically curate the initial data to conduct a co-authorship and co-citation analysis with highly cited research outputs (n = 500) and a co-word analysis with most relevant research outputs (n = 1000). These bibliometric analyses result in multiple networked visualisations that map the status quo and the nature of current citational and collaborative practices among the experts, institutions and countries involved in global AI Ethics research. Using Sheila Jasanoff’s co-production theory as a conceptual lens, we analyse these findings and show that the experts from the Global North currently legitimise their expertise in AI Ethics through dynamic citational and collaborative practices in knowledge production within the field. Collectively, they shape the discourses and institutional ways of understanding around the ethical development of AI technologies worldwide. This techno-politics of knowledge-making in AI Ethics culminates in creating epistemic injustice for the Global South. Drawing from Miranda Fricker and prominent feminist and postcolonial theorists, we explain how such injustice is produced and distributed through patterned pathways of co-production of AI Ethics. Thus, we show that the global project of AI Ethics fails to deliver its promise to be universally useful by keeping the global majority populations in the Southern regions marginalized as ‘others’.
Institution: University of Cambridge
Language: English
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4411550099